From the Los Angeles Times:<P><B>Tongue Presses Points That Are Anything but 'Irrelevant'</B> <P><BR>By: LEWIS SEGAL <BR>TIMES DANCE CRITIC <P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Tongue specializes in visions of the liberated, fearless, articulate body, aiming for a physicality so free it verges on the anarchic and anti-choreographic. <P>But as much as director Stephanie Gilliland loves to reap the whirlwind with her nine-dancer, locally based troupe, she manages to reinvent the process each season. So her "Ridiculous, Irrelevant and Immaterial" program at Highways Performance Space in Santa Monica on Thursday developed engaging strategies for sustaining her style of passionate, varied, pop-influenced athleticism.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE> <P><BR><A HREF="http://www.latimes.com/cgi-bin/slwebcli?DBLIST=lt01&DOCNUM=33496&DBPUB=20010428tLHjxnyo&QDesc=Tongue%20Presses%20Points%20That%20Are%20Anything%20but%20%27Irrelevant%27" TARGET=_blank>MORE.. .</A><BR>

Michael Scott - <A HREF="http://www.vancouversun.com" TARGET=_blank>Vancouver Sun</A>, 07/12/01:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Arts best Bet: Tongue</B><P>It's not surprising that the avant-garde Los Angeles dance troupe Tongue is physically prepossessing; what is strikingly unusual about the company from Culver City is that its seven dancers are far more than just pretty faces (and midriffs). One of its members has a graduate degree in aerospace engineering, another is a professor at Loyola Marymount University, two others are registered massage therapists and yet another is a certified instructor of Pilates movement therapy. <P>Tongue, in Vancouver this week for a pair of performances at the Dancing on the Edge Festival, is a young company, only four years old. This is its first trip out of southern California. <P>Los Angeles, for all its love of physical beauty, has almost no tolerance for live dance and Tongue, whose members all have non-dancing day jobs, is one of the only full-time, pure-dance troupes in that vast city. For its full-length Vancouver show, Tongue is bringing a highly experimental meditation on the nature of art entitled Tertium Quid, a dance video, and an explosive showpiece entitled Big Manuel. The Los Angeles Times described the company as devoted "to fanatical risk, zealous energy and superb movement skills." Tongue's one remaining Vancouver performance is Friday at 10 p.m. at the Firehall Arts Centre.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P> <P><BR><p>[This message has been edited by Marie (edited July 13, 2001).]

Michael Scott - Vancouver Sun, 07/14/01:<BR> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR><B>Dance work more aerobics than art</B><BR>L.A. troupe's athletic performance pales next to choreographer Tedd Robinson's soulful Rigmarole <P>Given the size and imperial trappings of our neighbour to the south, we forget that American culture can often be astonishingly naive and inward-looking. While we sit up here chewing our nails with worry that people might think we're not quite hip enough or worldly enough, Americans just get out there and do their thing, endlessly fascinated by their own ideas. <P>Although the organizers of the Dancing on the Edge festival of contemporary dance can't possibly have intended it this way, their juxtaposition of a racy dance troupe from Los Angeles and a solitary and intense Zen Buddhist from Ottawa proves the point that leading edge Canadian dance is sharper and more cosmopolitan than anything the Americans are producing. <P>The company has never before been outside of California and it shows. <P>The company's first piece, Tertium Quid, begins with a faux fashion show, the dancers strutting and pivoting like runway models in a convincing parade of inside-out clothing and intricate plaited-paper adornments. The emphasis here is on knowing smiles, rock-hard torsos and the weary, faintly smutty poses of haute couture. The energy of the percussive score, the bright-eyed posturing of the dancers and the play-within-a-play gambit augured well. Unfortunately, the sequence was over after only a few minutes, replaced by the plain vanilla shoulder rolls and jumping jacks that characterized the rest of the very long piece. <P>Only Tongue's video presentation met an international standard, not surprising perhaps coming from a town where mediated images are the principal stock in trade. <HR></BLOCKQUOTE><B>more...</B><BR><p>[This message has been edited by Marie (edited July 14, 2001).]

Gilliland troupe premieres 'Fish Is a Train of Glass' Sansha Anawalt, LA Times

It was hard not to miss Patrick Damon Rago in Stephanie Gilliland's company, Tongue, Friday at the Getty Center — his dancing is nuclear and dangerously overpowering. Without him, though, and because Gilliland choreographs collaboratively with her 10 other dancers, her more subtle, astute impulses showed in the world premiere of "Fish Is a Train of Glass."

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